Wait, what? Who is taking your body apart? I didn’t see that in this article, and I thought Sky Burial you were just left up there for nature to take its course, no need to be hacked apart, vultures can get the job done alone.

Nothing helps the grieving process like huge flocks of vultures, enormous swarms of flies, and the everpresent stench of death, plus the liquified guts dribbling down in the middle of the thing, splashing on people as they climb the stairs. What a beautiful funeral.

The phrase “rings of sarcophagi facing one another in concentric circles” leads me to believe no such process takes place. It will just be the usual corpses in (now very hot) stone boxes.

I also imagine that “regardless of nationality, race, religion, age or affluence” would hold until they reached at most 40% occupancy, at which point affluence would be a larger factor in getting a spot.

As I understand it a traditional Tibetan sky burial includes having your body ritually hacked up for the convenience of the birds. In the videos I’ve seen they used axes.

Native American and Zoroastrian style funeral exposures do not require dismemberment, though.

I would be happy to have any of the three, or even simply to be just buried without embalming or encapsulation. I am totally skeeved by the idea of my body becoming air pollution, fly ash, or toxic sludge after my death. Gives me the willies. I want to remain in the living cycle.

Cremation also ‘mystically sublimates’ a shitload of noxious exhaust pollution from the cremator fuel. To me it’s like saying "nothing in nature is going to eat of me, and I’m going to help spew out some crap as I go.
I read an article once, years ago about a ‘Forest of the Dead’. Basically you lower your beloved in a cardboard or wicker coffin, then plant a tree on top. An excellent use both of land and the dead methinks.
Why is this not commonplace?